Larry Page says that when you're obsessed with the present you're not looking ahead to the future

"We're still 1 percent to where we should be. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to try to move things along. Not enough people are focused on big change. Part of what I'm trying to do is take Google as a case study and really scale our ambition such that we are able to cause more positive change in the world and more technological change."

"I have a deep feeling that we are not even close to where we should be."

I. Google -- Doing Its Own Thing

Those sound like the words of a CEO of a company struggling technologically. But surprisingly the come from Larry Page, the current CEO of Google Inc. (GOOG) -- the maker of the world's most used search engine, most used online advertising service, and most used smartphone operating system platform.

In a new interview with Fortune, Mr. Page emphasizes Google's philosophy on how it differs from competitors. He says that most rivals who have issues with Google are more worried about themselves than their end users, where as at Google it's all about providing the best experience for the end user, which is built on the premise of openness. By providing Google services on as many platforms as possible (even those of arch-nemesis Apple, Inc. (AAPL)), Mr. Page says customers will have access to the best options on the market.

As for Apple locking out Google Maps and other apps from iOS 6, he simply comments, "We try pretty hard to make our products be available as widely as we can. That's our philosophy. I think sometimes we're allowed to do that. Sometimes we're not."

Google CEO Larry Page [Image Source: Bloomberg BusinessWeek]

The CEO accuses Apple (and its late CEO Steven P. Jobs) as being overly fixated on Google. Reiterating his comments from a previous interview, he says that Apple's legal campaign against Google is partly to rally the company against its competitor.

But he says that if you're fixated on your competitor, you're not looking forward at your own future. He remarks, "I don't like to rally my company in that way because I think that if you're looking at somebody else, you're looking at what they do now, and that's not how again you stay two or three steps ahead."

To him, Google has no real "competitors". He comments, "I feel my job is mostly getting people not to think about our competition. In general I think there's a tendency for people to think about the things that exist."

II. Risky Efforts are Important to Software Giant

The interviewer asks about Google's so-called "70-20-10 model" in which 70 percent of the company's spending is devoted to search/advertising, 20 percent is devoted to apps (like Google Docs), and 10 percent is devoted to experimental efforts (like self-driving cars and Project Glass).

He says that Google still mostly follows that model, but that some projects fall on the border of categories. He comments, "So where would you put Android? It's probably in the 70 in terms of impact -- the monetization is at an early stage."

As for Google Plus, he says the social network is faring "pretty well" and is "improving". He suggests that with Plus and other services users may not have received quite what they initially expected, but that Google's philosophy is that users must get accustomed to services before making judgements.

Page is optimistic about Google Plus. [Image Source: Google]

As for how long he will remain CEO at Google (Eric Schmidt was chief for 10 years), he says, "I don't know. It seems impossible to predict."

Apple is TOTALLY focused on companies it feels copied it's technology, but the sad truth is, everyone has moved past Apple now, and if they don't pull their heads out, they will be left with pretty, but expensive phones that are technologically behind the curve, very expensive but pretty laptops/tablets that are technologically behind the curve, and an MP3 player line that is a dead end.Do you that dead mans curve in the road ahead Apple? It might be time to start slowing down and turning the wheel.

Apple custom designs their own mobile CPU architecture which from Anand's reports seems comparable if not better than Qualcomm's Krait in performance and energy efficiency, despite it being their first design versus Qualcomm's years of experience. Absolute performance is below Cortex A15, but Anand feels it's more power efficient. Apple has very strong GPU performance in both smartphone and tablet. Apple's displays in the flagship iPad and iPhone are still right up there in pixel density, color gamut, and color accuracy. LTE, 5GHz WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 are all present and perform well. Their cameras are well rated.

For Macs, there doesn't seem to be much competition against Apple's successive push to standardize on HiDPI displays in laptops. Apple's actually ahead of the GPU makers themselves with HiDPI support since Anand reported Apple had to re-implement parts of the graphics pipeline in software themselves since current GPU hardware is lacking certain features Apple needs. Intel's Ultrabook program was a response to the success of Apple's MacBook Air. Apple never took part in PC maker's notbook push which turned out to be a dead end. That's hardly Apple being behind the technological curve. iMacs can actually offer faster CPU/GPU options than competing all-in-ones. Admittedly all-in-ones aren't for everyone, but overall the Mac market is growing while the overall PC market is shrinking so Apple is hardly wide of the mark.

It's not like a larger smartphone display is some technological leap that puts Apple far behind. Neither is NFC some technological game-changer. I can see the argument that Apple could price their products more aggressively or that iOS software could use bigger changes against the competition, but Apple's products having some technological chasm behind the competition?

Apple's hardware is generally more advanced than most other devices in most categories. It's hard to dispute that, love them or hate them. It's pretty rare that it isn't an Apple smartphone topping the graphics benchmarks, for example. But that aspect of the hardware isn't really the most important thing; people aren't that aware of how fast the CPU or GPU is in a smartphone.

It's their software that they've having trouble with. That's what's falling behind, where they're being surpassed by the competition. And I'm saying this as somebody who has never owned anything but Apple smartphones. iOS is long overdue for some pretty substantial changes.

I find it ludicrious that people think Macs built using standard off-the-shelf components available to anyone on the market mysteriously produce faster products. They have no special advance deal with Intel, Nvidia, AMD or anyone else. You can indeed get an equally performing laptop for much less cash. It's almost hillarious watching other companies trying to replicate Apple's success by overcharging consumers and running afoul of basic economics.

Apple are also in a serious corner. Their share price has taken a beating in the face of obvious problems. Android is a serious competitor in mobile and it's entering the Tablet market alongside Windows (the iPhone 5 and mini iPad were clear indicators that Apple was under significant competitor pressure to "copy" ideas - pity nobody design patented the 6-8" tablet ;)). There also appears to be limited room for creating new novel markets. AppleTV? At a time when TVs are dirt cheap and their manufacturers are floundering?

The Apple stock price is looking more like a bubble of hopes and dreams every day.

When it comes to desktop computers Apple is typically well behind the power curve. They always choose mid-range components and then charge "high end" prices. Which Apple fans lap up like hungry kitties.

In the laptop market they have adopted displays that are higher resolution than is available for Windows laptops. But the rest of their design follows the same philosophy as the desktop brethren. So they actually aren't "superior" at all.

Now in the Mobile Market I understand that they are advanced and perform well. And this seems in part to be due to the software being tightly integrated (the technical term is really "qualified") to run with their hardware. But again Apple is using the very cheapest hardware they can get away with... Then they charge a premium price.

Now you may not agree with the above statements. And all I'm going to offer for proof is this article on Slashgear > http://www.slashgear.com/apples-profits-exceed-the... So this is what I'm saying: They obviously don't sell more units. Androids beat them in the Mobile market and Windows PCs outsell them at least 8:1 in the desktop and laptop markets. So the only way they could make that profit is with the highest "margins" in the industry.

And that alone is the reason why, in the end, they will never dominate any market. Most people, a.k.a. the "uninformed masses, might like to own an Apple whatever but they can't afford it. Still I'm sure you Apple fans will continue to tell yourselves that their products are superior. And I understand that "our perception is our reality" so I won't give any further effort to convincing you otherwise. But "De-Nial" is not just a river in Egypt.

One last note: If you have Apple stock you should sell it while the price is still fairly high. Citi-Bank says its "dropped enough" but they probably have lots of that stock and they don't want you to sell yours before they do.

I agree with you about their phones. The iphones do have good hardware and superior GPU performance.

I don't support arbitrarily moving up in PPI standards, though. By arbitrary I mean producing high PPI monitors while performance overall suffers. In the macbooks case performance suffers greatly at native resolution even though the hardware is relatively good. Not the top tier but not scrolling webpages at 20fps levels of performance. At that point it becomes only useful for photography. Software can only do so much.

Going up in density doesn't make nearly as much sense as improving panel quality in general. They should pour that money into OLED development and adoption.

you should probably clarify that a bit.Apple does NOT custom design their own mobile CPU architecture. That would take YEARS to start from scratch and would take even more years to catch up. What they did was license the ARM technology (like other ARM cpu designers), and tweak it to fit their own needs. Also, it's not fair to compare to Krait, because Apple only has to tweak it to fit their own needs, and not for the general public which Qualcomm had to do with the Krait.

PA semi who apple bought was making power efficient chips for the military for years before Apple came along and snatched them up. They've also had years of experience making chips just like Qualcomm so your statement of Apple's new chips being first gen is clearly false. I wouldn't exactly call buying companies that actually innovate innovating. Apple doesn't innovate and they never have. They've stolen ideas like the mouse and graphical interface. They even stole multi-touch and patented it.

When Steve Jobs left as CEO the first time Apple floundered and had to be bailed out by Microsoft. Apple will be a sinking ship again soon enough. What new innovations has Apple came up with or stolen lately. I wouldn't consider a rectangle with rounded edges as an innovation.

quote: But he says that if you're fixated on your competitor, you're not looking forward at your own future. He remarks.

Over 90% of Google's revenues come from products that are over a decade old, over 80% of Apple's revenues comes from products that did not exist over six year ago, Apple has built a $30 billion plus a year business on a product that did not exist two and half years ago.

quote: "I don't like to rally my company in that way because I think that if you're looking at somebody else, you're looking at what they do now, and that's not how again you stay two or three steps ahead."

That's rich from the company that redesigned it's phone OS to look like iOS, that built a tablet after Apple created the mass tablet market, that copied Facebook with Google+. Other than the original Adsense and Pagerank what product has Google been the first with to the market in the last decade?

I loved the bit about Android monetization being "at an early stage". Android is a cost center for Google. It is an utter failure from the point of view of Google's business and a failure in terms of resolving Google's gigantic strategic problem which is that ad income (Google's only source of revenue) on mobile devices is a fraction of ad income on the desktop and the former is eclipsing the latter when it comes to internet usage. That's what Android is supposed to have addressed and it has failed to do so, great chunks of the the Android ecosystem are Google free (Kindle, China, the Nook) and even in the parts that includes Google services Android earns less revenue for Google than iOS. If it's all going so swimmingly well why doesn't Google release Nexus sales figures? Or an Android cost -revenue breakdown?

Page thinks Google has no real "competitors". No competitor in a business sector facing shrinkage. Every single statistic and analysis points to the same basic fact, ads earn significantly less income per user on mobile devices compared to desktop/laptop users. In five years the vast majority of internet access will be via devices and probably via apps, and nobody clicks on the ads.

quote: We try pretty hard to make our products be available as widely as we can. That's our philosophy.

Like Turn by Turn in maps on iOS? I guess that one slipped off of Google's radar somehow.

Only Samsung and Apple are making any money in the new mobile device markets. All the other big players in mobile are a commercial failure, all of them. Apple is still growing very strongly, it's sales and profits are all growing strongly.

One final indicator - Chitika, compared the web traffic generated by Nexus tablets to the Surface RT as a percentage of tablet web traffic. The Nexus was 0.91% and Surface was 0.13% of tablet web traffic. Guess which tablet go always scores over 90% on tablet web traffic?

"Over 90% of Google's revenues come from products that are over a decade old"

So what if google is making most of it's money off of long term technology. How long do you think apple would continue to make money if they stopped making new iStuff. About a year, maybe 2? Fact is Apple has no ability to generate continuing longterm cashflow from old products. Not when everyone replaces there phones every few years.

That's rich from the company that redesigned it's phone OS to look like iOS, that built a tablet after Apple created the mass tablet market, that copied Facebook with Google+. Other than the original Adsense and Pagerank what product has Google been the first with to the market in the last decade?

Well didn't apple take inspiration of tablet technology from the first people who made tablets? How is that different to Google opening a social network similar to facebooks? And isn't apple starting to fall behind in terms of bringing things to the market first, the iPhone 5 was a bit lackluster on new features.

I would say that android is still apples biggest threat, android has been picking up pace and apple has been losing market value and share.

I'd say unless Apple releases another game changer they are going to lose their premium product status.

Also, what the hell is with iMAC's using the mobility version of AMD's graphics cards!! Those are for laptops Apple!! BAD APPLE!!!

quote: How long do you think apple would continue to make money if they stopped making new iStuff.

Clearly not for long but that's as likely as California being wiped out by an astroid strike. The difference between Apple and Google is that Apple has entered new markets with new categories of products and in five years built a business with them that is bigger than both Google and Microsoft and Facebook and Amazon combined. That's innovation. Google had one very good money making idea fifteen years ago, since then zilch. So it's a bit rich getting lectures form Larry about innovation and the problems with Apple's business strategy.

quote: I'd say unless Apple releases another game changer they are going to lose their premium product status.

Presumably bit like BMW say, who have failed to come up with the follow up to the automobile and lost their premium status.

Time will tell about Apple's future performance, but please, enough with the cult worshiping. I worked for Apple for four years, I know all about thinking differently, left the company on good terms in order to start my own project.

Jobs had a knack of coming up with "insanely great" products with few exceptions. Now he's gone. Nothing stays the same forever. We'll see how Apple does; so far in the past few months we've seen some goofs that never would have happened a few years ago.

You remind me of when I wanted to start a religious cult when I was younger. Just you know, to get free money, from the believers. They'd be happy, I'd be happy. Win, win.

I certainly admire Jobs for his ability to influence people. He built a multi-billion dollar empire and a cult to go with it. But, he was a self-obsessed nutbag, so for that, unfortunately, he loses brownie points with me.

It is interesting though, looking at the similarities in neurotheology to company worship these days. I kind of found it annoying, irritating, the company worship. But I have a different perspective now, it is a tool that I can use. And I could use it to do good with. I certainly don't need to start a cult anymore, just start a company and ensure I target the right audience.

I don't care about benefiting myself anymore, I'm too old for that, so I'd probably look to put the proceeds towards something meaningful. Still, I appreciate the future revenue stream. Thanks. Keep up the good work!

"I'd say unless Apple releases another game changer they are going to lose their premium product status." I'd say Apple already lost their premium product status to Samsung. From here on they are only going deeper in the hole with their law suits.

quote: I'd say Apple already lost their premium product status to Samsung. From here on they are only going deeper in the hole with their law suits.

This is pretty much correct, technically. Though they are still highly valued and premium products to a huge number of people, still.

I have a GS3, and although the best phone in the market right now, it doesn't have the build quality of the iPhone. It's close, and certainly more than acceptable, but just not quite the hardware that hardware-worshipers would go crazy about.

But for functionality, features and overall quality, the GS3 spanks Apple's ass.

quote: Over 90% of Google's revenues come from products that are over a decade old, over 80% of Apple's revenues comes from products that did not exist over six year ago, Apple has built a $30 billion plus a year business on a product that did not exist two and half years ago.

Yes but for how long? Apple tends to flash bright, and burn out. We're seeing that decline now. With out something (Some one mentioned oled displays, now that's something!)they're going to be 1999 apple again. (pre ipod)

I'm sad to say that since the lawsuits started apple has been playing catch up on the phones. My 18 year old niece gave her iphone to goodwill! for the Galaxy3, a year ago you would have thought it was also a pacemaker. (OMG I'll DIE!) All the evidence I need, my stock sold at >$600.

Apple did some amazing things during the '00s, it will be remembered fondly.

The thing about Apple is now they have a following. Many people think that whatever Apple puts out it is the best thing out there. These same people think Apple Computer is also pure as the virgin snow. If you notice, Apple tries desperately to maintain this persona. Their commercial always have a white background and they make out like something simple was the best idea since the air conditioner.

The best thing Steve Jobs ever did was to get some people to blindly love their products. I'm not saying these things to insult Apple. The fact is without the cult following, Apple wouldn't be as big as it is. So long as the cult exists, Apple will always be relevant. I don't care if they are 20 years behind on technology, the cult keeps them alive.

When I see what the Apple following does it makes me want to work extra hard not to be blindly loyal to a company. They are companies not my friend.

AFAIK, everyone else including Google and Microsoft is still playing catchup to Apple.

Doesn't take rocket science to figure out that Android which is freely available is leading the marketshare as Apple's closed system made iOS not a choice for device makers.

Google and now Amazon is still playing catchup to Apple's huge vertical market. Appstore/iTunes alone helps Apple generate billions in annual profits that Google is trying hard to catch. Despite Google having more downloads now mostly freebies, they're not generating as much income as Apple.

Then there's the accessories market that Apple licenses along with huge lucrative carrier incentives makes iPhone the most profitable device on the planet.

These are all facts that makes Apple the 1st $600 billion company that isn't pumping gold like Exxon.

That's what I see and have been saying. Apple created the current market but can't seem to maintain it.

All they really need to do is change the OS. Right now it's 6 years old. And there are people that like the lack of change. But there are more people who prefer fresh & new. Those people use Android because Apple doesn't provide what they need.

The best thing, I believe, Apple can do is provide options to the customer. If the customer needs a 4.5" to 5.0" phone with quick display of information, in Android this is widgets, and overflowing features, Apple needs to provide or Android will. They should provide a larger alternative. Maybe settle on a 4.7".

At the same time, if people need what Apple currently has and is content with it, they would do well to maintain what they have.

They were first to market. They didn't create the market. The market was already there.

I bought my first phone early 2000's and I was rather peeved (given all the MP3 players that were out at the time) that it hadn't been merged into the one device back then. I was waiting for a device like over 10 years ago.

With modern SoCs, OLEDs, touch screens, batteries, etc. it was all coming together to create said device and more. A company just had to take a punt and do it.

Apple were in the right spot at the right time. Already with an established MP3 player. Already with an established OS. Already established music store (iTunes). Most of the heavy investments they needed had already been made.

They would've had to have been retarded not to attempt to capture this market in their position. The MP3 player market was going to die to phones that played MP3s and it was a big cash cow for them.

And Apple took the risk and reaped the reward. Good on them. Some company needed to do it.

But times have changed, competitors have caught up, they will need to remain competitive to stay in the game. They can sit on their mountain of gold and watch it slowly dwindle, throw it around to lawyers to try to maintain an empire, or they can innovate and stay ahead. Choice is theirs.

It's a difficult time for them. They no longer have a market monopoly, nor market edge. Just a marketing and monetary edge and a closed ecosystem with alot of consumers heavily invested in iTunes-only accessible DRM laden-content.

I would have said that the market stats show that all phone companies (Nokia, HTC, RIMM, the pathetic Motorola and LG and Sony) are having an excruciatingly awful time. Samsung is having a moderately OK sort of time with a business making about one sixth as much profits as Apple. I think all handset makers, including Samsung, would love to be having a 'difficult' time just like Apple's.

Because it showed me you are using your emotions to speak rather than unbiased knowledge.

You might fool some people, but you can't fool or deceive a person who was actually there and aware of the whole situation. The iPhone was the first of its kind and created this current. Whether you want your hatred of Apple to cloud your life, be aware that you only deceive yourself.

Maybe you are just ignorant. I don't know. What I do know, what you said is entirely false.

quote: Because it showed me you are using your emotions to speak rather than unbiased knowledge.

Pot. Meet Kettle.

There were plenty of consumers using blackberries and symbian based phones at the time the first iphone launched. Capacitive touch screens had already been introduced with the LG Prada. It wasn't even the iphone that popularized the market. It was services like Google's gmail that allowed people to experience more than just POP mail on their phones and apps (not written by apple) that really set the market on fire. Apple did an extremely good job at wrapping most of what the consumer wanted into a nice looking package but they did not create the market.

Give him something here... Apple did contribute and help make it much better. There were BB's Symbian and Palms that had more features thant he iPhone1 when released, but the iPhone1 made it fun to use and made people actually want a smartphone. They had a home run with the initial IOS in 2007 that changed the industry.

Since then, Apple hasn't done anything while the competition caught up and surpassed them, but give credit where credit is due. Apple did change the smartphone market. All they need to do now is stop bitching about people copying them and go back to innovating before the current feature GAP grows even larger.

The "market" I spoke of was the current type of smartphones we all enjoy. Since Apple launched the iPhone, the choices of solid, reliable and well-functioning capacitive-display phones like the original iPhone boomed quickly.

None of those BBs or Palms were using the technology of the iPhone. The GS3, One-X etc? Thank Apple for them. They came along - even as a direct copy in one instance - in response to the iPhone.

As far as the "market" you guys speak of, that has been around for ages before the iPhone. And it was Android that actually got app markets going.

All companies build off the successful ideas of other companies, that is how business works. Apple does it as much as anyone if not more.

"They came along - even as a direct copy in one instance - in response to the iPhone."

More like they saw the successful sales that Apple achieved and decided to release their own products into that market. If you want to use the word "copy" then you'll need to be attacking Apple for copying Palm and RIM with the whole OS and apps on a phone thing.

Hahaha...nah, nah. Not even close. I owned a couple Treos and one thing they were not were real phones compared to what Apple introduced with the iPhone. Not even close. The Treo was, though, among the best the market had to offer at the time. But when the iPhone came out, it was a radical departure from the norm at that time.

This applies to all the other offerings at the time also.

Samsung wasn't offering anything as good. And Samsung *did* copy Apple's property. Samsung does that. They use other companies as their R&D. Samsung lets other companies foot the cost of development and then steals the goods.

Apple put all the money and effort into creating the iPhone and managed the product well enough to be a fantastically successful product. Then Samsung decides to leach off of that Apple success rather than license it or create their own.

Hell, the original iPhone aside, forgetting about all that they copied to make it and all that the Mac copied as well, looking only at things Apple copied from its competitors on IOS after it was released.

You know exactly what you seem to me to be doing? Trying to whittle away the truth little by little in an effort to just get a small amount of ground here and there, and in a couple years the history books will be rewritten to favor others than Apple.

Whether you are doing that or not, I don't know. What I do know is Apple doesn't copy others.

I think you are doing quite the opposite. I am the one that started by acknowledging the leaps Apple made with the original iPhone and its positive effect on the industry. They did well with that release, and it did change the smartphone industry... But if you are asserting that Apple doesnt copy you are completely and totally wrong and uninformed of the facts.

Apple doesn't "copy" like Samsung does. Samsung steals, Apple pays. There have been plenty of reports about Apple paying for specific features they use in iOS. In some cases they buy the owner out. In other cases they license the tech. And in most cases they develop their own tech. But what they can't develop, they acquire legally.

To say that Apple copied Palm and RIM and others is just hyperbole. It's like saying MS and Google copied Apple and all the others (cellphone systems) before Apple. This whole cellphone system began with Motorola acquiring the technology for DARPA, a defense research agency of the US government.

So, technically, everyone copied the US government.

But one thing that needs to be acknowledged is the distinct demarcation line of what was before the iPhone and what came after. The iPhone is just that distinct to be a whole new and unique system.

So its basically OK when Apple copies and not for others to copy Apple. Right, I get it. Same old double standard.

Google: Here Apple, you can copy our notifications and widgets and navigation and social network integration and multitasking and copy/paste and opening apps from the lock screen and live wallpapers and Large screens and plenty other stuff as well. No problem, we are an open platform.

Nah, I almost thought you might actually be credible and unbiased. But when you say what you just said, in the face of the facts I put forth, your purpose becomes clear. And is an attempt to save the lost debate.

For those who may not be able to follow me, I specifically pointed out the "Samsung steals", "Apple pays". But for the "Apple stealing from Google" comment, you cannot steal what is open-source. Google didn't have any patents on any tech that Apple seemingly used. Google does not patent Android because parts of it are stolen. Google cannot sell Android because it would open them up to patent infringement litigation. Google can, and does, give Android away totally free to all - even common, everyday people.

To say Apple copied the notification feature that Android uses is true. It is very much similar, but not nearly as good as, the Android version. But Apple didn't steal it. And a case can be made that if Google wants to steal Apple property, Apple can legally take what they want from Android.

That's one thing I wish Apple would do in iOS - add widgets or something similar to widgets. Google can't say jack shit about it because there is no actual patents on them.

I am not talking legalities, nor to I care about Samsung in the lest... I am talking realities. If you want to talk "legally" then yes, Apple has masterfully manipulated a flawed patent system to their advantage and have broken no laws. I never said they steal, you used that word. I said they have always copied and still do. That is true and its not a bad thing, as all companies do this and always have. Its part of doing businesson planet Earth and its OK.

What sickens rational people is that they copy blatantly and cry foul when they are copied - if you cant see a double standard then there is no talking to you.

The problem I have with you saying what you say is, you come across making it out as Apple doing something wrong and that only Apple copies. That isn't true. The problem here is you trying make "copy" an evil Apple offense.

Nothing in this universe is new and uncopied (fractals, anyone?). Humanity constantly copies nature in everything it does. The car companies copy each other because all tend to have 4 wheels. Every company, every creature, every galaxy - everything copies everything else.

quote: What sickens rational people is that they copy blatantly and cry foul when they are copied

The difference, though, is Apple pays for what they use. If what they use isn't owned, how can Apple be the bad guy. But if you patented something for the specific purpose of making money off of it, you would be pissed if someone circumvented your patents and made money or your property.

LOL... I'm not sure where you're getting your info , probably an apple fansite, but you really need to dig deeper before posting ridiculous nonsense like this. It's purely laughable to even think that you consider Apple not to be 1 of the worst offenders of copied tech. Even Steve Jobs admitted that they do it and do it shamelessly in his words. and I'm not saying that it's a bad thing it's not all companies do it, and apple does it too, that's perfectly fine... The only problem comes with the faux outrage and lawsuits when others do it to them.

Am I really 1 of the few people lest that DON'T want to have my media player inside my phone? Is it nice? Sure, but it drains my battery for important things like making calls or communicating with people in general. I don't like having to worry about being near a power source to charge my phone because battery is low constantly from listening to music. I have a Bionic and love the fact that I can use internet anywhere I am at (has been convenient many times) as well as using it as the most updated GPS I'm aware of. I love my Zune HD, outputs sound better than any iPod I've ever heard (deeper more separated bass as well as higher highs) but its marketing was terrible. I honestly wish MS would bring it back. Other than the iPod there is no real alternative on the market anymore for a mobile media player. Archos is pretty much gone with the wind and it charged you for codecs. Finding a lossless player is hard nowadays. I just like for certain products to be separated is all. Not saying it's a bad thing, just something I don't want to use.

This whole discussion has many good points.. Apple makes great products, and manages to market them at a much higher profit margin than their competitors (also helps them having the first successful content distribution system out there). They may not get there first, but they usually do it right, which was what drove them to their current popularity.

The last few years haven't exactly been revolutionary, though.. most importantly on the software end. iOS remains popular despite lack of new features with each new release (can't tell how many iPhone 4S users I know who wish they could downgrade from the recent updates); but OSX is the real issue, and is in serious danger of becoming entirely irrelevant. MS was hounded by letting so much time pass before offering a successor to XP, only to get demonized when a few changes were introduced with Vista -- where Apple has somehow gotten away with not offering any real changes to OSX in a decade. Sure, a total rewrite isn't necessary with the Darwin/FreeBSD core.. but a few improvements here and there certainly can't hurt. Whenever I'm stuck on a Mac, I feel like I time-traveled back to the days of netscape navigator with it's entirely bland and overly cumbersome interface.